Hello!
Last day i drove with matthias mollner to Grünau in the Almtal with our aim to climb the 42 pitches in the northwall of the schermberg.
thats 1400 metres of altitude difference and normal climbing duration from 8 to 12 hours.
i tried this tour 6 years ago with buchsbaum reinhard, when we walked from 4am from the parking lot outside the gate to the wall. we managed to find the beginning of the tour at half past 10. thats too late for this tour. 🙁 so we holded off on this project.

the first problem is between 15.9 and 15.10 the street to the almtalerhaus is closed due to a hunt lock. so you have to walk 7km’s to the almtalerhaus. aaaah
from the almtalerhaus you must walk again 1.5hrs to the beginning of the wall.

so we drove “ilegal” at 17:15pm to the schermberg northwall. unfortunately one huntersman stopped us and said” he cannot allow this to go further to the almtalerhaus because they are planning to shoot some red deers”.
we explained our important project and the necessity to start early in the morning in the wall. so he allowed us only to sleep near the almtalerhaus, not near the wall – thats too dangerous sleeping in the nature, where the hunters want to shoot their deers. so we were lucky not to cancel the tour.

we find a small storage room near the almtalerhaus where we slept because of the humidity without tent…
during the night we listened many time to the deers. brrrrrrr.

at half past 4 in the morning we woke up and at 5am we started in the darkness with our mountain bikes from the almtalerhaus to the beginning of the schermberg north wall.
at 7:20am after 350 metres of altidude difference of the approach we started the to climb with the 4 tiblocks, so that we can do speed climbing. that does mean you can climb simultaneously, so you can spare a lot of time.how to use tiblocs

perhaps you remember the film “am limit” from the huber buam. i felt like these guys when we climbed. you can imagine no long breaks only climbing and looking for the right way and take care for loosen stones and give maximum power. really!
the rocks moved like a conveyor. so i call it from now on conveyor climbing – thats my term 😉
i had to economize my luggaage, so i could only took photos with my handy cam 😉
for eating i had only two apples and some cereal bars and three litres of water. thats it.
we found a cave after the first pitch at the direct north ridge.
i walked 10m into the snow vulcano cave and then i through a stone downwards. i think the cave must be big because of the natural ventilation. if i have time i will explore this cave.
enough reported…

at 12:50 we managed the end of climbing and we were standing on the schermberg(2396m) summit. yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
the view was really great. after lunch we climbed the new fixed rope route “tassilo” downwards in 50 minutes 😉
normally you need 3 to 5 hours upwards.

then we find a cool block for bouldering. so matthias and me we said let’s do it. 2km’s of climbing is not enough for us… we managed 3 new boulders and marked the beginning with an arrow. you can try it at the platform before the fixed rope route on the normal way.
2 chamois came up to five metres to us and looked how we try to climb up this block on a difficult way and not trying the easiest… 😉

then we climbed down to our mountains bikes and had a really nice downhill to the ödseen near the almtalerhaus where we did some swimming after this monster tour. what a nice refreshing. the schermberg north wall did a mirror in the lake. amazing nature.
we finished our tour at 17:05 at the parking lot.
it was another really great days in the mountains….
cya bernhard